considered the largest and most powerful general-purpose computer system. It is usu-
ally used to fill the needs of a large agency, company, or organization, because it uses
hundreds of computer terminals at the same time. Supercomputersare sophisticated
machines designed to perform complex calculations at maximum speed. Because of
their speed—and the great amount of data they can work through—they are most
often used to model huge dynamic systems with many variables, such as weather pat-
terns and groundwater flow.
Microcomputersare usually subdivided into personal computers (or desktop com-
puters) and workstations. Oftentimes, microcomputers are linked together in a local
area network (LAN) or by joining the microprocessors in a parallel-processing system.
This allows smaller computers to work in tandem, often giving them comparable
power and computational abilities to mainframes.
Familiar to many people today are notebooksand laptops,which are very similar.
Laptops are small enough to fit on a person’s lap; notebooks are usually a bit smaller
and lighter than a laptop. The newest ones often have the same capabilities as a desk-
top computer. 365
MATH IN COMPUTING
Mainframe computers like these can fill a room in a company’s office, but smaller businesses that did not have
the money or space for mainframes once used smaller mainframe units called minicomputers. By the late 1980s,
microcomputers had become powerful enough to replace minicomputers. Stone/Getty Images.